[v13 Spoiler] Rift Gardevoir Critique

[MhicKy]

So I've just managed to defeat Rift Gardevoir and, lemme tell ya, I do not feel satisfied at all with this victory.. Because I felt like the only reason I beat her was by cheating..
In v12 my main strategy was to poison her with Toxic, use Leech Seed and then just stall with bulky Pokemons, Protect, Fake Out, 2 turn moves like Dig, Dive or Bounce and, tho' cheesy, was a strategy at least.. I tried the new Gardevoir in v13 and, at first, I thought she was going to be easier because the Ralts and Kirlias are not there anymore (even tho' she still summons them in the cutscene) but boy was I wrong..

Strategy#1 - Paralyze her so all my Pokemons could go first
Utter failure, for some reason the field doesn't allow for Thunder Wave to be used, she would still be paralyzed by Nuzzle but she has a Lum Berry and none of the Pokemon that learn Nuzzle are bulky enough to be able to use it twice, heck, even if you try to use 2 Pokemons to do that you can only do it once by using the Focus Sash and since you don't have 2 Focus Sashes, that's a bust..

Strategy#2 - Set up a Trick Room
You wish.. I thought since she was pretty speedy than even my speediest Pokemons that a Trick Room would, well, do the trick but, once again, the field does not allow it so.. That was 2 hours of my life leveling Pokemons for this strategy I will never get back..

Strategy#3 - The Old Stall strategy with Leech Seed and Toxic
Firstly, Leech Seed doesn't work on Rift Pokemons anymore so get real, secondly Rift Pokemons won't take damage from status effect until their shields are fully down and, since she has a Lum Berry, I gotta sacrifice 2 Pokemons to get her poisoned AND Rift Pokemon don't flinch with Fake Out so.. NEXT!

Strategy#4 - Use my Aevium-Ampharos with Cotton Down + Flash to screw with her Speed and Accuracy
For some reason, even with 2 speed downs she was still faster than my Boltund, my fastest Pokemon (Tried to used Nuzzle twice again with Focus Sash assuming he would be faster) on my team and apparently either her moves always hit or I was very unlucky that the accuracy down did nothing but I am willing to think her attacks always hit since I tried using a Muk with Minimize too and she still managed to always hit it.. Back to the drawing board..

Strategy#5 - Get her poisoned, TWICE, and then use Venom Drench to lower he Speed and S.Attack
I though this could work.. Since Venon Drench lowers Attack, S.Attack and Speed it seemed perfect.. Well.. She can't have her S.Attack lowered by it or any other move like Captivate (Tried that too) so.. Yeah..

At this point I was pretty hopeless but tried again.. The ONLY WAY I managed to defeat her was to poison her TWICE (One for the Lum Berry, the other to stick) and use a bunch of pokemons with high S.Def or Sturdy to wither her shields down and then, and that's the part that makes me feel like I cheated and therefore not satisfied, use a bunch of Revives, Max Revives and Ultra Potions to stall.. And that's why I felt unsatisfied.. Every strategy I thought off was either foiled by the damn field, the new Rift Pokemon shield, the fact that this Gardevoir outspeeds EVERYTHING and she has a Lum Berry just for the "strategy" that works to be just spam items.. Difficult battles are one thing but when there's THIS MUCH things stacked against you that all your legit strategies just simply don't work and you have to rely on spamming items to win then I just feel dirty for it but I couldn't afford to spend another hour or so training yet ANOTHER batch of Pokemons for the attempt alone so..

[fellowry]

1 hour ago, MhicKy said:

Strategy#2 - Set up a Trick Room
You wish.. I thought since she was pretty speedy than even my speediest Pokemons that a Trick Room would, well, do the trick but, once again, the field does not allow it so.. That was 2 hours of my life leveling Pokemons for this strategy I will never get back..

But Trick room IS doable thats how i beat her in intense after all, Trick room will only last 5 turn but at that point you will be faster than her (Except if you have mon that is faster than her or you screw up and paralyze her ), hard thing is to find Sweeper with enough bulk to tank at least one hit but still does enough damage to 1 shot its shield, granted its not an easy fight and RNG screw me many times over but Trick Room cheese is how i did it.  

 

The buggy one is fairy field in this fight as it SHOULD block all status move but somehow she can still land her lovely kiss -_-

[MhicKy]

11 minutes ago, fellowry said:

But Trick room IS doable thats how i beat her in intense after all, Trick room will only last 5 turn but at that point you will be faster than her (Except if you have mon that is faster than her or you screw up and paralyze her ), hard thing is to find Sweeper with enough bulk to tank at least one hit but still does enough damage to 1 shot its shield, granted its not an easy fight and RNG screw me many times over but Trick Room cheese is how i did it.  

 

The buggy one is fairy field in this fight as it SHOULD block all status move but somehow she can still land her lovely kiss -_-

Are you talking back in v12?
Because right now it isn't.. I tried it.. The field didn't allow it, I made a full team set for Trick Room, started with Oranguru with the Focus Sash and, oop, nope.. It pissed me off soo much because I wasted an hour or so leveling them in the only Audino Trainer in the area just to be immediately put down..

[fellowry]

Nope just beat it in v13, but i did use magical seed to automatically set up the trick room  its the field effect after all so maybe normal trick room is buggy?

[fellowry]

Also a viable strategy against all rift field is to use pyukumuku purify on it, it will remove the dimensional field and drastically reduce Gardevoir damage and allow us to set up Fairy counter

[Vivi_Hallow]

...Or just catch a Magnemite with Sturdy, and teach it Magic Coat. Garde will always use Sweet Kiss to put you to sleep. Just coat it, she will fall asleep. Then hit her once or twice, as you see fit and repeat. Congratulations, you cheesed the whole fight with a magnet boi. (Intense mode, btw)

[MhicKy]

1 hour ago, fellowry said:

Also a viable strategy against all rift field is to use pyukumuku purify on it, it will remove the dimensional field and drastically reduce Gardevoir damage and allow us to set up Fairy counter

Oh that I didn't knew but at that point I just too frustrated to even consider..

 

24 minutes ago, Vivi_Hallow said:

...Or just catch a Magnemite with Sturdy, and teach it Magic Coat. Garde will always use Sweet Kiss to put you to sleep. Just coat it, she will fall asleep. Then hit her once or twice, as you see fit and repeat. Congratulations, you cheesed the whole fight with a magnet boi. (Intense mode, btw)

I did not have one, and since I couldn't get out so that wasn't an option..
-EDIT-
I did not had one with Magic Coat and the move relearner does not exist there, I realized it could create a confusing of me saying that I did not had a Magnemite but I was talking about one with the move

 

1 hour ago, fellowry said:

Nope just beat it in v13, but i did use magical seed to automatically set up the trick room  its the field effect after all so maybe normal trick room is buggy?

I think the glitch part is the Magic Seed doing it since regular Trick Room gets blocked by the field but I do not have a Magic Seed on me anyway so..

[crulla]

2 hours ago, fellowry said:

Also a viable strategy against all rift field is to use pyukumuku purify on it, it will remove the dimensional field and drastically reduce Gardevoir damage and allow us to set up Fairy counter

Yeah Pyukumuku holding a Chesto Berry is the best strategy here imo. My strategy was: Purify it, Toxic it to remove Lum Berry and then Memento. Swap to Electrode to Paralyze and Screech it as much as possible until Electrode dies, then to Meowstic to set up both screens and Fake Tears until Meowstic dies. Switch in Ribombee with Sweet Veil to block Sweet Kiss and use Dazzling Gleam to kill off as much shields as possible - if you get off 1 Fake Tears then you'll shave of 1 shield per Dazzling Gleam - if invested enough, Ribombee can live long enough to get her down to 0-1 shield. Aevian Parasect + Copperajah can deal with the rest - they should easily kill her if she was Screeched once or twice.

[Throhdown]

One thing I did notice about this battle is that memento doesn't seem to work properly or perhaps I'm missing something.It's supposed to lower both physical and special attacks but for some reason it would only lower physical and not special.Also when I used misty terrain also doesn't work properly as every time I used it with sylveon lovely kiss goes through anyway.Did I miss something or is this fight broken.

[stucklul]

you can easily beat her with the sylveon you got gifted just teach it flash and use calm mind with the use of energy roots which you buy for 800 in gdc its a cake walk.

[Arthesia]

The issue isn't that it's too hard with the right strategies, but that it requires overly specific strategies and/or revive spam to beat.

[Mia789]

I must agree I dont really like that the Rift Pokemon now have shields that protect them from status afflictions which was one of my main tactics against a lot of them in v12. Gardevoir was the hardset for me already in v12 but in v13 it seemed close to impossible for me. Only thing that worked for me was the gifted Sylveon holding the wkae up from sleep berry and boost with calm mind with some heal in between and teach it safeguard with a TM I thankfulyl got casue fairy field didnt work. In v12 even tough it was a double battle it was easier.

I have only praise for the people that managed to do it otherwise cause she outspeeds and 1 shots all my pokemon even those that double resist (mawile)

[MhicKy]

7 hours ago, Throhdown said:

One thing I did notice about this battle is that memento doesn't seem to work properly or perhaps I'm missing something.It's supposed to lower both physical and special attacks but for some reason it would only lower physical and not special.Also when I used misty terrain also doesn't work properly as every time I used it with sylveon lovely kiss goes through anyway.Did I miss something or is this fight broken.

She can't have her S.Attack lowered, I tried, that's why Memento isn't working properly, it's a feature, not a bug

 

4 hours ago, Mia789 said:

I must agree I dont really like that the Rift Pokemon now have shields that protect them from status afflictions which was one of my main tactics against a lot of them in v12. Gardevoir was the hardset for me already in v12 but in v13 it seemed close to impossible for me. Only thing that worked for me was the gifted Sylveon holding the wkae up from sleep berry and boost with calm mind with some heal in between and teach it safeguard with a TM I thankfulyl got casue fairy field didnt work. In v12 even tough it was a double battle it was easier.

I have only praise for the people that managed to do it otherwise cause she outspeeds and 1 shots all my pokemon even those that double resist (mawile)

Yeah, it isn't that the Misty Field doesn't work per se, it's that this Gardevoir cheats anyway so it doesn't matter..
Well Mawile has low S.Def so even if it resists 4x her attack it still gets overwhelmed by her ridiculously huge S.Atk..
I don't know.. The shields didn't really bother me that much but the fact this fight in specific makes a lot of strategy don't work just "because" is what bothers me.. You can't lower her S.Atk, why? Because! You can't set Trick Room, why? Because! Can I at least Leech Seed? No.. Why? Because.. How about Misty Field? Can I use to protect against her sleep? Pff, nah! WHY?! BE-CAU-SE!!

[fellowry]

I'd like to think that Gardevoir fight is kinda like checkpoint to test how solid our teams are at that point of the game, cuz there several more bullshit fight waiting in line, for example Kowapudunga or whatever the hell that oversize whale name is, that fight is far more bullshit not only it got like 999ev in HP, access to infinite pp, Rest+ water veil (Yeah it got Rest prepared to get rekt and outstalled) and it would one shot your whole team with field powered dive, the only viable way to win is to debuff it first and beef up your own sweeper as much as possible.

 

Gardevoir on the other hand is fast beatdown pokemon and kinda fragile, there are several strategy that would work, double Amoongus with regenerator and spore, Magical seed to prompt Trick room, Pyukumuku to purify the field, or you can catch 5 steelix outside of town with sturdy and gyro ball lol. The only threatening move is her sweet kiss that kill stalling comp, which can be countered by buying chesto berry in the city

 

My only complain is that at that point we kinda stuck in the past so if you're the type that only use 1 team or your current mon somehow all got hard countered by her, you kinda get softlocked

[Mia789]

1 hour ago, fellowry said:

My only complain is that at that point we kinda stuck in the past so if you're the type that only use 1 team or your current mon somehow all got hard countered by her, you kinda get softlocked

Thats also one of the things that makes it harder. The first time I ever played Rejuvenation it took me hours to beat Gardevoir cause I only had only really used 6 Pokemon and had to train the Sylveon up the hard way. (Hurray for the XP candies to get it fast done)

And your choice which Pokemon to use or items is limited.